CITYist

Slicked hair and supersized blazers in shades of grey tossed over tissue tees were sent forth at the start of Duckie Brown’s Spring/Summer 2011 show. A mist grey coat that floated above the runway displayed the penchant for volume characteristic of the label’s designs. Cuffed trousers abounded, in step with the season.

As the models took their standing space on the risers facing the audience the vision of a garment gradation began to take form. The preppy, square, suited man slid down—by way of animal prints and crayola select leggings—into a make-do-with-salvage aesthetic, and then to boyhood innocence, with sciencey pajama-like prints of insects. By the end of the show, the model began to look if he had been dressed in the dark in Kurt Cobain’s childhood closet.

The collection gave an overall effect that certainly looks deeply comfortable, if not confused. But in this economic climate, there seems to be one extreme or the other: the devil-will-care, so pair tiger stripes and plaid, or the dapper upper east side chap, each lapel in place. Perhaps, though, designers Daniel Silver and Steven Cox were making a prediction for fashion’s (d)evolution: as we graduate from the depression’s palate of grey and the suited day, men will hungrily don whatever their whims may fancy.